SPIELBERG'S CHOICE

DreamWorks' long-awaited first movie, The Peacemaker, a Russian-nukes thriller starring George Clooney and Nicole Kidman, was directed by a woman who had never made a feature film before. What has Mimi Leder got that inspired Steven Spielberg to put $50 million and DreamWorks' reputation in her hands?

KIM MASTERS

Hollywood

After seeing The Peacemaker, DreamWorks' slick, muscular thriller, you might imagine its director, Mimi Leder, as the kind of woman you'd find mounted on her Harley running skull-ringed fingers over the stubble of her buzz cut. This tale of terrorists who steal Russian nukes shoots suspensefully from the steppes of the former Soviet Union to New York by way of the Balkans and has a lot more brains—and crackle—than your average action movie. But The Peacemaker is not what you might consider a "feminine" work. DreamWorks partner Jeffrey Katzenberg observes, "You look at Mimi Leder and say, 'There's a disconnect here.' You're not going to say, 'This woman, this movie. I get it.' "

Leder is as unprepossessing as any Valley mom—perhaps because she is a Valley mom. She's married with an 11year-old daughter, who has a tiny part in The Peacemaker. She's middling in height, weight, and hair length. Yet Leder enjoys one distinction that eludes even nonValley matrons: she's on Spielberg's List.

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"Her camera had wings." That's how Steven Spielberg describes Leder's work on ER, the television series he co-produces. As early as the show's first season, the mogul-filmmaker says, he could always spot Leder's dailies. "I would spend 10 minutes watching a rough cut and say, 'This one belongs to Mimi Leder.'"

That explains why this Emmy-winning veteran of TV's China Beach, Crime Story, and L.A. Law (where she made her directorial debut) was entrusted with a $50 million budget; the care and feeding of George Clooney and Nicole Kidman; and the first film to be released under DreamWorks' midnight-blue banner. Leder, who was the first woman to graduate from the American Film Institute's conservatory, had never directed a big-screen feature. "It was actually quite a bit of pressure," she says, acknowledging the expectations of DreamWorks founders Katzenberg, Spielberg, and David Geffen (not to mention their uncharitable rivals). "I decided to approach it as I would approach anything—scene by scene, shot by shot." The alternative? "Paralysis."

DreamWorks had shopped the script (which is based on reporting done by Leslie and Alexander Cockburn for Vanity Fair) to a number of seasoned hands: Martin Campbell (Goldeneye), Wolfgang Petersen {Outbreak), and Phillip Noyce (who almost walked off The Saint to do it). All ultimately passed. Then Spielberg put his foot down—in Leder's direction. "Everybody said, "Wow, this is a big movie. Can she handle this?'" Katzenberg says. "And Steven said, 'Yeah.'" Leder claims that Spielberg fought for her "tooth and nail," but in his case one or the other suffices.

Among those he had to convince was Leder herself. "He called and said, 'I've got a huge action picture that spans four countries and I think you're a great action director,'" Leder remembers. "I said, 'What do you mean action director? I direct drama.'" But Spielberg had seen those ER episodes. "She would always have a signature moment," he says. "There was always more emotional intensity inside the drama." And Leder had a knack for enlivening potentially static scenes. "There's a lot of stuff going on with Mimi that gets expressed through the camera itself," explains producer Walter Parkes.

"Her camera had wings," says Steven Spielberg. "There was always more emotional intensity inside the drama."

Of course, once the movie got rolling, Leder found out what she had gotten into. "Little did I know," she says, "how it would be to make a movie entirely on location in Eastern Europe and New York City." There was an international crew speaking several different languages; production meetings were conducted with the help of interpreters. Pre-production had been rushed (DreamWorks wanted to get its first project going), and as filming began in New York, the script hadn't jelled.

Pre-production was doubly trying because her beloved father—an independent filmmaker who had introduced his daughter to her craft—was dying of lung cancer. "She would say, 'I don't know what to do,' " Clooney remembers, "but he would have killed her if she hadn't jumped all over this opportunity."

There was considerable anxiety over the film's tone. Clooney, among others, worried that it would be humorless, too somber. Spielberg, however, preferred the verite style of Costa-Gavras's Z. Leder also favored a straightforward, action approach. But with the script fluid, Clooney says, "everyone kind of started adding things in." As Leder pared away some of the jokes, the cast started to get nervous. "There was no real way of telling what kind of movie we were making," Clooney says.

Back in Los Angeles, rumors started to swirl that the picture was in trouble. "That production was like a simmering teapot that never really boiled over," says Parkes.

"But it could have." Mark Johnson, the producer of Donnie Brasco, jetted to Slovakia for a six-week uncredited assist. Meanwhile, Leder remained almost abnormally calm. "I never thought we I were in bad shape," she says. Outwardly gentle and, as they say in Hollywood, "good with talent," Leder has underpinnings of steel. "Mimi's very good at that kind of passive-aggressive thing," Clooney says. "She'll say, 'Sure, George, that's a good idea,' and then do exactly what she wanted all along."

Leder, who has just signed a new deal with DreamWorks, had wanted to follow The Peacemaker with a picture called Sentimental Journey, based on her parents' lives. Leder envisioned a family affair, with her brother drafting the script and her sister doing the casting. But Spielberg handed her another megaproject, tentatively titled Impact, about a comet menacing the earth. Morgan Freeman, co-starring with Tea Leoni and Robert Duvall, is set to play the president of the United States. Once again, it's the high wire: the studio is trying to hold the budget at around $75 million, and Spielberg was originally scheduled to direct himself. This time, even the unflappable Leder appears to feel some heat. "This was his movie and he gave it to me," she marvels. "Yikes."